West Coast rail: Kate Mingay accuses Government of making her a 'public sacrifice'

A civil servant suspended over the West Coast rail bid fiasco accused the
Government of making her a “public sacrifice” as she failed to persuade the
High Court to allow her to return to work immediately.

Lawyers for Kate Mingay, the most senior of the three Department for Transport officials suspended on October 3, said her continuing suspension was not only “intolerable” to her but had led to widespread public belief, fuelled by media coverage, that “she must have done something wrong”.

Justice Kenneth Parker said he was “very concerned about the continuing prejudice” to Mrs Mingay and her career, but he ruled against reinstating her only days before Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin receives an internal HR report into who was a fault for the West Coast debacle.

The report by Bill Stow – former director-general of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – is due to be handed to Mr McLoughlin on Monday.

The judge ordered the DfT back to court on Friday next week, however, to decide whether in light of the Stow report Mrs Mingay should be reinstated.

A witness statement from Mrs Mingay, who was present in court but did not speak, highlights her sense of injustice over being suspended while other officials with far greater responsibility for the West Coast project remain in post. They include Peter Strachan, the DfT’s head of major projects, who was the senior responsible officer for the West Coast bid.

Alleging that the way she has been treated breaches her employment contract, Mrs Mingay said: “I feel that I have been unfairly singled out. The DfT’s actions and failures to act since my suspension have only served to reinforce my fears that I am being unfairly scapegoated for political reasons.”

Mrs Mingay, who is the DfT’s director, commercial and technical services, stressed she was only one of around 30 people involved in the West Coast project, which took up only “a very small proportion of my working time”.

She was informed of her suspension by Mr Strachan but, despite numerous attempts to clarify why, she was merely told it was to allow an investigation into her “role and conduct”. She said that, if the DfT considered the investigation had to be conducted “in the absence of the people involved in this process, then a significant number of employees would need to be suspended”.

She said suspension meant she had to “fight to obtain access to documents” and pointed out that, a week after she had been temporarily relieved of her duties, the DfT created an organisational chart which was “inaccurate and misrepresents my position”.

She said the chart “placed me in a reporting line position of responsibility for the technical advisers to the DfT, which is incorrect and highly prejudicial bearing in mind the errors emanating from the economic and financial modelling which that team was involved in”.

Mrs Mingay added: “I consider that I have been treated in an intolerable manner by the DfT and I have thought about resigning on a number of occasions.” However, she decided against that “as I want to clear my name and... return to work”.

In court, the judge said a witness statement from DfT permanent secretary Philip Rutnam had made “criticism of [Mrs Mingay's] conduct that is quite serious in nature”, not least as chairman of crucial meetings of the Contract Awards Committee.

His statement claimed the committee had “not followed the public guidelines of the department in determining the level of the subordinated loan facility” (SLF) FirstGroup and Virgin Rail were required to pledge against the risk of them walking out on the contract, “applied discretion” and taken an “unfair approach”.

FirstGroup “won” the bid with an offer to pay £13.3bn for running the London-to-Scotland line until 2028 and put up a £190m SLF – less than half the amount due if the DfT had applied the rules properly.

The court heard that Mrs Mingay could only have been suspended in “exceptional” circumstances or for “gross misconduct” – the latter not an issue in this case. The judge accepted that a high profile project that had gone “spectacularly wrong” could be considered exceptional but added: “This is not a straightforward case by any means.” He said it was “clear from the evidence” that there were issues that were “hotly in dispute”.

Lawyers for Mrs Mingay had earlier criticised the DfT for only making available its skeleton argument and witness statements 15 minutes after the hearing had begun.

“It’s not an appropriate way for a Government department to behave,” said Clive Sheldon QC, noting that such “unacceptable conduct is part of a pattern of the way our client has been treated”.

Outside the court Mrs Mingay’s solicitor, Mishcon de Reya, said: “Kate’s very pleased that the judge recognised the extreme prejudice that her continued suspension causes. We are disappointed that the Permanent Secretary chose to express for the first time today, once the hearing had already started, the reasons for his decision after having pressed him for weeks – though we note there were no allegations of gross misconduct”.

Separately, Centrica chief Sam Laidlaw has asked Louise Ellman, chairman of the Transport Committee, to postpone next Tuesday’s hearing at which he is due to be questioned by MPs over his report into the West Coast debacle.

While Mr Laidlaw has filed his report, Mr McLaughlin will not have published it in time for the committee hearing. Unlike Mr Stow's inquiry, Mr Laidlaw's report does not seek to name the individuals involved.